BY GEORGE PHILLIPS, C.E. 139 



at his disposal, he will put in culverts or inverts at those places. 

 If the country is deficient in stone or gravel (as even country is 

 very apt to be), but is ^Yell supplied Avith suitable timber, the 

 engineer will probably make a ' corduroy ' road, and eventually 

 discovers that if he has taken care to select logs cut from 

 straight trees of about the same diameter, well laid and bedded 

 in the soil with close joints, no inconvenience will be experienced 

 from the action of water running across the road. 



Now let it be assumed that it is desired to convert a 

 corduroy road over even country into a railroad by the simple 

 process of spiking rails to the timbers. If this be done, the 

 rolling load will be still more effectually distributed by the rails 

 acting as girders, and it will be found in practice that if the 

 rails are spiked to every third or fourth log, accordmg to their 

 diameter, the intervening logs may be conveniently removed, 

 and by doing so there is not only a saving in timber but a very 

 appreciable space is provided for natural drainage between the 

 remaining logs, which we may now term sleepers ; if these are 

 embedded a few inches in the soil, the road will be found 

 sufticiently firm for all practical purposes, and a good pioneer 

 railroad will be obtained without further expense in the direction 

 of artificial drainage, because the wheels, not coming into 

 contact with the soil between the sleepers, do not disturb it, and 

 consequently there is no tendency to scour. 



